Galician Slaughter 1846

[Bonobo]

Galician slaughter is one of the grimmest events in Polish history. In 1846 peasants in southern Poland attacked their landlords` mansions and murdered their masters in the cruellest way, taking revenge for centuries of slave work, debasement and proverbial Galician poverty. E.g., peasants sawed off heads of their victims. As the Austrian authorities paid a double price for a dead man, peasants killed their injured victims on the doorstep of a booty office, so blood flowed in the streets in streams.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_slaughter

The Galician Slaughter (German: Galizisches Gemetzel; Polish: Rzeź galicyjska or Rabacja galicyjska) was a massacre of Polish nobles (szlachta) by Polish peasants in Galicia in the Austrian partition in early 1846 that lasted from February to March.[1] It was a rising against serfdom, directed against manorial property (for example, the manorial prisons) but with many victims;[2] Galician, mainly Polish,[3] peasants killed about 1,000 noblemen and destroyed about 500 manors.[1][4] The Austrian government used the uprising to decimate nationalist Polish nobles, who were considering an uprising against Austria.[1] It was the largest peasant uprising on the Polish lands in the 19th century.[1]

The massacre, led by Jakub Szela, is also known as the Galician Massacre, and began on 18 February 1846. This led to the "Galician Slaughter," in which many nobles and their families were murdered by peasants. Szela units surrounded and attacked manor houses and settlements located in three counties - Sanok, Jasło and Tarnów.

In the Free City of Kraków (Republic of Cracow), a few democratic nobles tried to rouse the peasants to rise up against Austria. They began the insurrection in February 1846, gathering support from the more enlightened[citation needed] peasants of the Cracow region (the Kraków Uprising). However, most of the peasants of Austrian Poland (Galicia) were undernourished because of bad harvests and hated their lords. Peasants, incited by the partitioning power, attacked the nobility, looted their estates and killed the landlords who were leaders of the independence movement. The peasants accused them of subjecting everyone to repressions by the “legal” partitioning authorities, who paid peasants who presented members of Tarnów’s city council with the corpses of members of the nobility. Furthermore, the Austrians offered money for the heads of Polish nobles.

A similar uprising of nobility (szlachta) was planned in Posen, but the police quickly caught the ringleaders. By contrast, Tarnow's district officer panicked and asked for peasant help.

Some Habsburg officials sponsored a counter-appeal to the peasantry of the province, urging loyalty to the emperor and resistance to the insurrectionary Polish szlachta, the gentry; the unexpectedly ferocious response was a peasant uprising against the gentry, culminating in the massacre of more than a thousand people in the region around the town of Tarnów. The lesson that the gentry learned was that the Polish peasants were not susceptible to the insurrectionary cause of Polish nationalism and actually preferred to cast their lot with the Habsburg dynasty; many nobles in Galicia came to the conclusion that they should do likewise. The Republic of Cracow was abolished and incorporated into Galicia.

The massacre of the gentry in 1846 was the historical memory that haunted Stanisław Wyspiański's play The Wedding of fin-de-siècle Cracow's excursion in the country. An old beggar in the cast of characters can still remember the massacre after half a century—"I saw, I watched with my own eyes"—and it is he who later finds himself face to face with the ghost of Jakub Szela, the peasant who took the lead in the violence of 1846.

Serfdom existed in Galicia until 22 April, 1848, meaning that it was abolished - and the lot of the Polish peasantry in Galicia thus fundamentally improved - in the immediate aftermath of the uprising against the local Polish nobility.








Peasants brings cut off heads to get reward.

[pjotr]

For a slight moment I thought about the German Peasants' War (1524–1525), but there it was the other way around.

The German Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt (German: Deutscher Bauernkrieg) was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe, 1524–1525. It failed because of the intense opposition of the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed and poorly led peasants and farmers. The survivors were fined and achieved few if any of their goals. The war reflected, like the preceding Bundschuh movement and the Hussite Wars, of a series of both economic and religious revolts in which peasants and farmers, often supported by Protestant clergy, took the lead. The German Peasants' War was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising prior to the French Revolution of 1789. The fighting was at its height in the spring and summer of 1525.

The revolt incorporated some principles and rhetoric from the emerging Protestant Reformation, through which the peasants sought freedom and influence.

Luther and Müntzer

Martin Luther, the dominant leader of the Reformation in Germany, took a middle course in the Peasant's War. He criticized the injustices imposed on the peasants, and the rashness of the peasants in fighting back. He also tended to support the centralization and urbanization of the economy. This position alienated the lesser nobles, but shored up his position with the burghers. Luther argued that work was the chief duty on earth; the duty of the peasants was farm labor and the duty of the ruling classes was upholding the peace. He could not support the Peasant War because it broke the peace, an evil he thought greater than the evils the peasants were rebelling against; he also criticized the ruling classes for their merciless suppression of the insurrection. Luther has often been sharply criticized for his position.

Thomas Müntzer was the most prominent Protestant minister who supported the demands of the peasantry, including political and legal rights. Although Müntzer was a religious leader, politically he showed less interest in religious questions than in the social position of the people. Münzer's theology contained powerful mystical and apocalyptic elements that form the basis of his support for the peasants. As the war developed he focused more and more on non-religious themes. During the war Müntzer traveled from province to province offering leadership and encouragement. He became the main leader of the peasantry in Saxony. Diarmaid MacCulloch argues that the role of Müntzer has been exaggerated for political reasons. He writes:
"The Communist regime of the German Democratic Republic, building on Marxist historical misuse of 1525 from Friedrich Engels onward, found it useful to elevate Müntzer into an earlier incarnation of Lenin. In reality Müntzer was an impractical mystic and dreamer….He had no interest in the material betterment of the poor. His contribution to 1525 was marginal, apart from its result in leaving himself and his scanty band of followers to a wretched death."

Luther took every opportunity to attack Müntzer's ideas. He declared against the moderate demands of the peasantry embodied in the twelve articles. His article "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants", which appeared in May 1525, alienated the lower classes.

[pjotr]

As being partly of Polish szlachta background and partly of Dutch farmers (generations back: ancesters of my Rotterdam city people family) I can imagine the standpoint of both sides. However my sympathy lies more with the Polish szlachta, because serfdom had had it's time, and because they stood for Polish Independence as Polish Patriots. Serfdom was outdated, cruel, primitive and inhumane. And like Slavery in the Dutch colonies in the late 19th century serfdom would soon be abolished. And ofcourse as a Catholic humanist I am against abuses of human rights, mass murder and the the absense of the rule of law. This is a great minus point for the Habsburg rulers of Poland, who in an opportunistic way abused the situation. In general the "Austrian" occupation of Poland was seen as less brutal than the occupation of the Prussians and Czarist Russia, with their oppressive Germanization and Russification policies.

If you look at the principles of the french revolution:
Enlightenment principles of equality, citizenship and inalienable rights. The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. The growth of republics and liberal democracies, the spread of secularism, the development of modern ideologies, and the invention of total war all mark their birth during the Revolution.

That sounds nice, but there had to be the period of the Red Terror, before the principles of the French revolution could be implemented in the Western societies of the European countries and America. What I dislike about the French revolution is it's anti-religious nature and the widespread murder campaign that accompanied that revolution. It was the example for the bloody Russian October revolution.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianisation_of_France_during_the_French_Revolution
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_Wars

Back to the Galician Slaughter 1846

I wonder if this Peasent uprising agains the Polish nobility can be seen as a bloody socialist rebellion (?), because it was an example of class struggle. It reminds me of the French revolution (anti-aristocratic uprising), the Paris Commune, the Russian Narodniks (Russian anarchists in the 1860s and 1870s) with their terrorism, Socialist-Revolutionaries and after them the Bolsjewists with their terror against the Russian aristocracy, public officials (of Czarist Russia) and others who opposed their ideas.

Unfortunately this anti-elitist, anti-aristocratic and anti-intelligentsia terror continued during the 20th century with the elimination of the Polish intelligentsia and aristorcracy by the Sovjets (1939-1941 and 1944-1947 -supported by the Polish Urząd Bezpieczeństwa) and the Nazi's (1939-1945), China under Maoism, Cambodja (the terror of the Khmer Rouge), and the Red terror in Ethiopia (1977–1978)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist-Revolutionaries

P.S.- I have always detested the glorification of workers or poor peasents. In the 20th century I have seen the disastrous results of workers and peasent rule. People who lacked education, humanity and who were filled with revenge thoughts and who did not serve the interests of their people, their country and their culture.

[tufta]

The most 'funny' part of it all is that these same peasants attacking "Polish landlords' in _same generation_ became ardent Polish-Catholic patriots.

[pjotr]

Tufta,

It's the same like ardent Polish socialist revolutionairies later became enlightened dictators, putting their former Socialist and communist comrades in prison.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pjotr]

Feb 26, 2013 21:41:34 GMT 1 tufta said:

The most 'funny' part of it all is that these same peasants attacking "Polish landlords' in _same generation_ became ardent Polish-Catholic patriots.

They could be ardent Polish-Catholic patriots, but I stil don't like these brutal murderers of Polish Patriots. They served the Austrian Habsburg cause. I can't approve lynching, maiming and mass murder!

[pjotr]

In partitioned Poland émigré emissaries inspired conspiratorial activities. After the failure of several other attempts, an uprising was planned for 1846. Stanched by arrests in Poznań, it got off the ground only in Kraków (where a national government was proclaimed) and in the neighbouring districts of western Galicia. The Kraków rising was put down by Austrian troops, and the city was annexed; elsewhere peasant antagonism toward the landowners was channeled by Austrian officials against the mostly noble rebels. A jacquerie (peasant revolt) developed, in the course of which many manors were burned down and landowners killed. This came as a shock to Polish democrats, who had extolled the people (lud) as the backbone and the hope of the nation, and to conservatives, who had warned against a social upheaval.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica ( www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/466681/Poland/28208/Emigration-and-revolt )

P.S.- The conservatives were right! (The Polish szlachta before had proven to be naive in political and power questions. Which lead to the Polish partitions. I don't read about Magnata in this article bo. Were Polish dukes, counts, Margrave [Margrabia], and etc.)

[tufta]

Feb 26, 2013 21:58:50 GMT 1 pjotr said:

Feb 26, 2013 21:41:34 GMT 1 tufta said:

The most 'funny' part of it all is that these same peasants attacking "Polish landlords' in _same generation_ became ardent Polish-Catholic patriots.

They could be ardent Polish-Catholic patriots, but I stil don't like these brutal murderers of Polish Patriots. They served the Austrian Habsburg cause. I can't approve lynching, maiming and mass murder!

Pieter, when they slaughtered Polish noblemen they didn't know yet they are Polish (the peasants that is IF it's not clear - I am ready to explain in detail, but NOT today.

[pjotr]

Feb 26, 2013 22:23:29 GMT 1 tufta said:

Feb 26, 2013 21:58:50 GMT 1 pjotr said:

They could be ardent Polish-Catholic patriots, but I stil don't like these brutal murderers of Polish Patriots. They served the Austrian Habsburg cause. I can't approve lynching, maiming and mass murder!

Pieter, when they slaughtered Polish noblemen they didn't know yet they are Polish (the peasants that is IF it's not clear - I am ready to explain in detail, but NOT today.

Tufta,

I get the image. They were undeducated, poor, enslaved peasents, without education, who lived in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Habsburg, and thought they were Austrians, Galicians or...?

Cheers,
Pieter

P.S.- My mistake was that I looked at it from a 20th and 21th century perspective. This massacre took place in the first half of the 19th century, in an under developed area of Poland.

[tufta]

Feb 26, 2013 23:55:23 GMT 1 pjotr said:

lived in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Habsburg, and thought they were Austrians, Galicians or...?

In fact there was a researcher who did ask them who they are twice, in times of slaughter and several decades later. His name was Franciszek Bujak. And there was another one who asked them the same question, same village, some... 100 years later. His name is, if I recall correctly, is Zbigniew Wierzbicki. And the name of the village is ¯mi±ca.

So - at the time of Galician Slaughter (or Rabacja Galicyjska) they responded that they are Catholic, and opposed it to Protestant or Jewish, or that they were "peasants".

They didn't murder landlords, clerks, anyone who was not "peasant" and spoke Polish, which of course they did too, because they were some heartless beasts. They did it because they were manipulated into believing that those 'non-peasants', who spoke the same language, went to same Churches, were beasts aiming at killing them.

Now to the change of attitude. There were peasants who took part in 1846 who some 50 years later were singing proudly "Jeszcze Polska nie zginê³a' and singing sincerely. So the change from "peasant" into "Pole" was superswift. Of course, as you note very correctly, the region was extremely 'backward" and by no mean does it represent the state of the mind of peasants from other regions of First Rzeczpospolita.

What is interesting is what happened during 100 years. The peasants of Galicja in 1946 were not the perpetrators of of a pogrom anymore. They were victims of a communist pogrom. They didn't fight against Polishness but defended it, fighting for free Poland...and against communism taking away God from them...


Isn't history strange?

[pjotr]

History is a strange thing. Unfortunately I sometimes believe in the Eastern concept of Karma, if you connect it to our Western cause and effect and the biblical saying an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It is chilling that the primitive vendetta, rumor/gossip stories and primitive murderous methods survive systems, regimes and generations. How strong is our democracy, our civilization, our legal system our culture of human rights, equality, equal opportunity, sophisticated humanism to keep our disputes of the past and present from A kangaroo court ("a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted"), people taking the rights/laws into their own hands (mock rule/lynchings). A Dutch writer, a cynical or ironical one, like many Polish writers of the 20th century too, Willem Frederik Hermans, said: "What are we so called civilized, sophisticated European democratic citizens other than a thin layer of 10% education, civilization and selfcontrol, and 90% of barbarism and darkness". (Keep in mind that this man was from the Second War generation, who saw a democracy turn in a murderous totalitarian and authoritarian regime and then after the war turn back to a democratic society.

[pjotr]

What if the offspring of the victims of the anti-Polish progrom of the Ukrainian UPA and Stalinist forces (of NKVD, UB, Polish Peoples Army, the Red army, and the Communist militia) turn agains the offspring of these Stalinist communist thugs and Ukrainian nationalistic murderous fanatics?

People always need a scapegoat, if the economy goes down, unemployment rises, poverty grows, demoralisation starts and minorities and old enemies become targets again. The Ukrainians, the Belarussians, Russians, foreigners, jews, protestants (Calvinists/Lutheranians), Germans, fellow Poles who aren't Polish enough, former communists, former oponents within the dissident opposition (because they are attacking eachother today, instaid of the former communists)

[tufta]

Pieter, I am afraid Willem Frederik Hermans is totally right. And I think that you are right too with karma-rationalism dichotomy. Somehow humankind fails to find the golden middle way between the two.

[tufta]

[quote author=pjotr board=polishhistory thread=2796 post=27676
People always need a scapegoat [/quote]

I'd add SOME Some people. And the question is how many, how many show this weakness versus how many stay strong and don't look for scapegoats etc..

[pjotr]

Hermans wasn't an easy, pleasent nor loved person. He was a person who attacked the Dutch academical establishment (1975; “Among Professors”), the political correctness of it and leftist tendensies at the universities during the seventees. He went in a sort of voluntary exile to Paris, France. He was part of what they call the big three of authors in the Netherlands, along with Harry Mulisch and Gerard Reve. Mulisch and Reve however were more cherished, fashionable and to the taste of the Dutch reader. Hermans was maybe more a writer for the world. I don't know if his work is translated, but he is a writer which belongs to the canon of European continental writers whom subject was the 'recent history' (the newest, 20th century history), 'La condition humaine', and the situation a individual human being can be in in a certain environment, in a certain place and certain time in the history of mankind. Like the Second World War. I don't know if his novels have the same quality if they are translated into English, Polish, German, French will keep the same quality?

My favorite Hermans novel is "Beyond Sleep" (Dutch: Nooit meer slapen) ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Sleep )


Willem Frederik Hermans



Willem Frederik Hermans, (born Sept. 1, 1921, Amsterdam, Neth.—died April 27, 1995), Dutch satirical novelist who vehemently attacked the ills and hypocrisies of (the Dutch) society.

Hermans’ early novels and stories are overcast with dark, disillusioned tones. De tranen der acacia’s (1949; “The Tears of the Acacias”), which features a feckless fighter, satirizes the Dutch Resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. He returned to the war as a theme for his noted short novel “Het behouden huis” (1952; “The House of Refuge”) and the novel De donkere kamer van Damocles (1958; The Dark Room of Damocles); the latter was filmed as Als twee druppels water (“Like Two Drops of Water”) in 1963. Hermans rejected the possibility of human virtue, seeing the individual as either predator or prey, and characterized his own philosophy as “creative nihilism.”

Hermans, who was a geologist, taught at the University of Groningen from 1953 to 1973 and found subject matter for fiction in his profession. The geologist protagonist of Nooit meer slapen (1966; “Never to Sleep Again”) comes to doubt the existence of scientific truth, and Hermans satirized academic communities in the novels Onder professoren (1975; “Among Professors”) and Uit talloos veel miljoenen (1981; “From Countless Millions”). He also wrote poetry, plays, criticism, and scientific works. A later novel is Au pair (1989).


Hermans with his cat

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Frederik_Hermans
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Frederik_Hermans
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Frederik_Hermans
ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Херманс,_Виллем_Фредерик (There is even Russian interest in him?)

P.S.- We are in a sort of Polish-Dutch comparisson game here -which I like-. I would'nt know with which Polish author Hermans could be compared?

[pjotr]

To my great surprise I just found out that Hermans novel ‘Het lek in de eeuwigheid’ (the leak into eternity) was translated into Polish by Krystyna Szyszkowska and was published under the title ‘Przeciek w wiecznosci’ in Z kraju Zlotego Lwa: opowiadania holenderskie, Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warszawa 1975;

And his work was translated into Slovenian, Hungarian, Russian and Spanish.

The website of the Dutch Hermans institute, which examins his work and tries to promote his work and the knowledge about his person (importance) ( www.willemfrederikhermans.nl/ )

[Bonobo]

Sept 8, 2009 22:05:51 GMT 1 Bonobo said:

Galician slaughter is one of the grimmest events in Polish history. In 1846 peasants in southern Poland attacked their landlords` mansions and murdered their masters in the cruellest way, taking revenge for centuries of slave work, debasement and proverbial Galician poverty. E.g., peasants sawed off heads of their victims. As the Austrian authorities paid a double price for a dead man, peasants killed their injured victims on the doorstep of a booty office, so blood flowed in the streets in streams.

The film adaptation of the superb drama "Wedding" depicts the scene of Austrians paying for sewn-off heads of Polish landlords
at 1:03:30